Vancouver’s final medal count shows the unhappy Russians way down the list, with just 15 medals. But there’s more to their grumbling than sour grapes — way more. A little analysis shows an interesting picture of wins leveraged by political shifts.
The Russian government is unhappy because it is remembering the “good old days” of the Cold War, 1949-1989. This was when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were going head to head in sports, with each one avid to pile up the most Olympic medals and demonstrate its “superiority.”
Moscow came out ahead because the Russian-dominated USSR had a vast region to pull athletes and coaches and resources from…meaning Russia proper and the other 14 countries that comprised the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics along with Russia. East Germany — which came under Communist rule after the Soviet occupation during World War II, but competed independently from the USSR – also fattened the Communist medal haul.
(In my analysis, I’m not counting the satellite communist countries of eastern Europe, like Poland and Czechoslovakia, because they competed independently from the USSR and didn’t dominate the medal standings like the Soviets did. East Germany is a special case, because of issues devolving from the Soviet/Allied occupation, and also because East Germany became a communist powerhouse in the medals standing.)
So, during that balmy (for the Reds) era, it was usually the USSR that won the most medals at each Winter Games. The U.S. was usually an also-ran during those years. Not only that, but the Soviets dethroned Canada as the hockey power. This was between 1956 and 1988. Only in 1968 did a non-communist country – Norway – get the biggest pile. In 1980, it was East Germany, not the USSR, that won the most medals. Typically the Soviets ran off with anywhere from 16 to 29 medals at each Winter Games.
And what country dominated the Winter medals race before World War II, and before the USSR entered Olympic competition? Usually it was Norway.
Then in 1989, things started falling apart for Moscow. The USSR – with all its countries and its massive combined sports resources — began breaking up. When the 14 other countries declared their independence and made their own affiliations with the IOC, Russia was left holding the bag on her old challenge of “superiority” and medal-winning.
In 1990, after communism ended in East Germany and it reunited with the West, Germany started sending a single unified team to the Olympics. And guess what — in 1992, at the Albertville Winter Games in France, it was reunified Germany that wiped up the floor with the Soviets, and owned the podium with the most medals — 26!
In short, the radical rearrangement of ideological borders across Europe has meant a radical re-distribution of medals as well. To put it another way — today, when the Russian premier growls that his winter-sports coaches should all be fired as punishment for their poor showing in Vancouver, he’s blaming them for something that isn’t their fault.
Here’s a closer look at the rearrangement. In Vancouver, the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Estonia each sent their own independent teams — and each won 1 medal, meaning 4 medals that Moscow couldn’t get. Meanwhile, Germany continues to be a major medal power in its own right, with its 30 medals in Vancouver. So that totals 34 medals that Russia might have had if the old regime had still been in place. This explains a great deal about why the Russians are pissed.
Another factor working against Russian wins is this: additional countries coming on strong in winter sports, like Japan, South Korea and the People’s Republic of China. They’re now nabbing medals that the Soviets used to get as a matter of course – like figure skating.
Yet another problem for Moscow is its own dire economic problems. Some Russian athletes flee a growing poverty of sports resources in their own country — to live and train in Europe, Canada and the U.S.
Oddly enough, the Russian haul in Vancouver wasn’t much smaller than that 16 or so that the Soviets used to win in the glory days.
It’s true that the pie is bigger now. There are more winter sports to compete in, like halfpipe and snowboarding. But there are many more countries competing hungrily for pieces of that pie now – 82 in 2010, compared to 32 countries in 1956. And hungry Canada has worked to recapture dominance in hockey.
That Vancouver total of 15 is in no way a disgrace to the individual Russian athletes who competed with their whole hearts. Russian talent hasn’t changed. It’s the world that has changed.
So the next time around, with the 2014 Winter Games held on their own turf, the Russian government isn’t going to win more medals by playing politics, or throwing tantrums, or punishing their people. The best thing they can do is…stop living in the past. I hope they will do what every other country in the medals standing has been doing. Namely, work hard to develop new talent, and support their athletes and coaches in the most positive ways possible.
- By Patricia Nell Warren
9 responses so far ↓
1
JC
// Mar 1, 2010 at 9:31 pm
Something else that is noteworthy…a great many of the former Soviet coaches (particularly in figure skating) are in North America now. It isn’t just the athletes who are working and training elsewhere.
2
slick
// Mar 1, 2010 at 11:33 pm
What a pile of indulgent blog nonsense. 500 words to get across the point that “Fewer medals because Russia is smaller now.” What about the effects of the massive economic dislocation and the ‘lost generation’ that occasioned Russia’s wrenching conversion to (pseudo-) free markets? And, aside from Ukrainians, how many figure skaters of the Soviet era were actually from the ‘other’ countries–Kazakh, Armenian, Estonian, etc.? They’re certainly not on the podium now. This analysis is just so incredibly simplistic.
For a better one read NYT on this topic.
3
Dan E
// Mar 2, 2010 at 10:31 am
I agree with slick; the primary focus of this is also incorrect. It’s not about losing the other republics (though that surely had some effect); it’s far more about (a) losing the dedicated athletics infrastructure (though you touch on that towards the end) and (b) the shrinking population of Russia (which you don’t even mention); Russia has an incredibly low birthrate (1.3 children per fertile woman; replacement rate is 2.1 children per fertile woman), heavy emigration and low immigration, and a very high death rate. All those factors lead to a lot fewer athletes.
4
TampaZeke
// Mar 2, 2010 at 12:08 pm
I’m also curious about the comment that the unified German team took metals from the Soviet Union. Wha? As you point out in the article, the East German team always competed for East Germany. They never added to the Soviet medal count and their unification with West Germany had no effect on their medal count whatsoever. Do you really think that the Soviet Union felt that a gold for East Germany was a gold for mother Russia? What about when, as was often the case, an East German beat a Soviet athlete?
I also find it interesting that the point that the old Soviet Union had many more people to take their athletes from than current Russia does yet, Cyd and others have argued that it’s ridiculous for Canada to make the point that they got more gold medals and had a percentage of the overall medals, in comparison to the USA, that belied the fact that they have only one tenth the population of the USA.
I think this whole discussion of who got the most medals and who got the most golds and why is SO fucking contrary to the intended spirit of the games in the first place.
As much as people laugh at the Gay Games and the Special Olympics for what they see as their willingness to give a medal to just about anybody for just about anything, I think that they are much more true to the spirit of international peace and community through sport that the games are supposed to represent than the over politicized, over corporatized, over nationalized and over sensitized modern Olympic games.
5
Patricia Nell Warren
// Mar 2, 2010 at 12:52 pm
I disagree with Slick and Dan E.
First of all, there IS value in just looking at the changing medal-count numbers as a reflection of global politics. Today everybody is very focused on the numbers race. Younger Outsports readers may not be familiar with the Cold War, when all these fierce nationalist struggles over the medal count started.
Second — the USSR that launched its Olympic bid in the 1950s had problems with population that were more severe than today. Estimates vary, but some historians state that 14 million Soviet soldiers died during World War II, along with many untold millions of civilians. Not to mention an estimated 20 million people (this is a conservative figure) who were killed during the pre-war and post-war Stalinist purges.
On the economics front, there had been wholesale destruction of Soviet infrastructure in any areas where World War II reached. And cash for rebuilding was in short supply, since the USSR rejected Marshall Plan aid from the West. So the Olympic sports program that the Soviets put together was a case of spit and baling wire — at least into the 1960s, when the USSR moved into an era of relatively greater prosperity.
Because of the repressive political climate at home, Cold-War Soviet athletes performed under a great deal of duress — especially during the Stalin era. If they did well, the rewards were great — but if they failed, they went home to face the music.
So I don’t place the huge emphasis that you do on population and economic factors in Russia today. Whatever the dislocation in Russia when the USSR broke up, it was nothing like the nightmare that Russia faced in the mid-20th century. As a result, these factors don’t work as “the reason” why “Russia is getting fewer medals.”
6
Dan E
// Mar 2, 2010 at 2:22 pm
@Patricia–
Please follow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_of_Russia.PNG this link for a history of Russia’s population from 1950 to present. As you can see, there was steady growth until about 1990.
And the economics factor is not about the overall economics of the nation, but rather the willingness to invest in athletics. During the cold war, Russia invested in two things (ok, that’s hyperbole, but not by much): weapons and athletes. They considered the Olympics a way to “prove” the superiority of Communism. Since the break-up of the USSR, athletics investment has taken a dive. That’s what I mean by athletics infrastructure/economic factors; not the overall economy of the nation, but rather how Russia/the USSR chose to spend its limited resources.
You put the break-up of the USSR front and center; I’m sorry but it takes a significant back-seat to demographics and economic factors.
And let’s be clear: the entire Western world (which has until recently [China] always been the source of the top Olympic teams) suffered great population losses and challenges in the wake of WW2; today’s population challenges, while reflected in other parts of the developed world, are no where else nearly as bad as they are in Russia, nor are they coupled elsewhere with the serious economic and social issues (rampant alcoholism, for example) that Russia is dealing with.
Again, I don’t doubt that the break-up of the USSR was a factor, but you put front-and-center something that should really play second fiddle to these other factors.
7
Patricia Nell Warren
// Mar 2, 2010 at 2:47 pm
@ Dan E, we will have to agree to disagree. By and large, historians show that the “population losses and challenges in the wake of World War II” were just as great in the Soviet Union as they were in the West, especially if you include the impact of ongoing purges in the USSR.
@ TampaZeke. No, the East German medals were not counted with the Soviet medals. However, beyond the actual count and on the propaganda plane, East German victories were definitely considered as victories for Communism over the West, no different than the Sovet wins — especially in that one year that East Germany won more medals than anybody at the Winter Games. When East Germany joined with West Germany, its medal-winning capacity made the new unified Germany into a bigger power on the medals count.
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Dan E
// Mar 2, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Patricia–
I may have been unclear; I was saying that the population challenge was true everywhere at the end of WW2, whereas it’s relatively unique to Russia today, not that Russia didn’t have such challenges then.
But yes, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
9
ossurworld
// Mar 3, 2010 at 2:23 am
Training for the next Olympics will begin at the Gulag.
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